Cigarrette Burns - Film

[HDTV Forum]

CIGARETTE BURNS are PROJECTOR REEL CHANGEOVER cues.

There seems to be a fair bit of confusion about this so here's some background. Herewith are some film facts.

HOWEVER, for the sake of relevance to this forum I'd like to first reference Richard Fisher's observation that many videophiles haven't seen cigarette burns because they haven't seen alot of film being projected. It's sort of like the audiophile recording engineer who never leaves the control room to hear what the instruments REALLY sound like.

This is an excellent point because it serves to remind us that the FILM is the ultimate standard for what the film should look like on video -- NOT the video standard. The tail should not wag the proverbial dog.

I think we as fellow Video Weenies -- and I use that term with great affection -- sometimes lose sight of that . . which is not a good thing.

MOVING ON . . . . .

CIGARETTE BURNS are marks in the upper right -hand corner of the projected film frame that indicate when the film on one "reel" is about to run out.

On 3x4 or 1:85 or 70mm films the marks are circles and on anamorphic 2:35 films they are horizontal ellipses

REEL CHANGEOVER CUES are pretty much an anachronism leftover from the days when theatres had two projectors per screen and had to do a "reel changeover" every 20 minutes or back in the very beginning every TEN minutes.

Theatres now have ONE projector per screen with a platter system which sort of looks like a giant 8 TRACK PLAYER ie a horizontal disc about five feet in diameter with the entire film sitting on it. The film then is fed thru the projector and is wound onto a second platter.

SO; WHAT's A REEL and WHY DO -- or rather DID -- YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THEM.

A REEL is 1,000 feet of 35mm film -- it remains to this day the basic editorial / post-production unit of theatrical film production.

35mm film runs at 90 feet per minute so a 1,000 foot reel is technically 11 plus minutes. However, the accepted standard time for a reel is TEN minutes.

Historically, short films like THE THREE STOOGES were referred to as "TWO REELERS" because they were 20 minutes long.

Feature films were traditionally called "TEN REELERS" ie 100 minutes long.


SO, WHY DO -- or rather DID -- YOU HAVE TO CHANGE REELS.?

They're big and heavy AND . . . years ago the film projectionists union was extremely powerful and insisted on an operator for each projector.

TODAY the union is NOT powerful and all the projectors in a 20 screen multiplex are often by run ONE minimum wage high school kid who also works at the concession stand.

Not to pick on minimum wage high school kids but that's one reason for the drop in the quality of film projection in this country. To wit; projectionists actually used to LOOK AT THE FILM as it was playing to check it. Today,
it is probable that someone pushes a button at the candy counter to start the projector and never even looks at the film.

NUTS AND BOLTS

Films are still released to the theatres on 2000 foot projector reels which contain two 1000 foot reels. On a two projector screen that's a reel changeover every 20 minutes or 5 changeovers for a 120 minute film.
Trust me, that is alot of work for the projectionist.

On a single projector platter system screen the 2000 foot projector reels are spliced together onto one giant roll of film that lies horizontally on the platter.

HARD CORE NUTS AND BOLTS
WHAT THE BURNS / CUES ACTUALLY MEAN

There are two sets of cues one approximately 10 seconds from the end of the reel and one approx 2 seconds from the end of the reel.

The second projector is threaded so that the incoming reel of film sits in the lens gate at the 10 second mark on the "leader" of the film. The "leader" precedes the picture material on the reel and contains timing numbers and information about the print which are not intended to be seen -- those flashing countdown numbers that have become so graphically chic of late actually serve a purpose.

As the film on this first projector nears the end the projectionist watches the screen for the cues. When he sees the first cue he starts the second projector so that it can get up to speed. When he sees the second cue he
changes over the projectors with a "douser swatch" which simultaneously
opens the light source of the second projector to shine thru the film and closes -- or douses -- the light source on the first projector.

That is a reel change or changeover.

Yes, it does seem kind of crude and imprecise but it works.

One of the reasons it works is that there is safety margin built into the prints called the "PULL-UP."

The PULL-UP is based on the fact that the sync point of the optical soundtrack of the film runs approx 18 inches AHEAD of the corresponding
picture.

Long story short -- the picture must be projected INTERMITTENTLY ie it is stopped and held static when it is projected. The soundtrack must be read CONTINUALLY ie NO starting and stopping.

Projectors have loops of film that act like springs above and bellow the projection lens to absorb the slack so that the film isn't torn as each frame is held static for 1/24th of a second.

The sound track is PULLED-UP ie pulled ahead of the picture to physically give the film time to go from start and stop motion to continuous motion.

This affects the CHANGE-OVER because if the reels were switched
based on the VISUAL CUE without the PULL-UP you would lose the last second and a half or so of audio of the outgoing reel.

So what the PULL-UP does is duplicates the last [ approximately ] two seconds of audio of the outgoing reel onto the beginning of the incoming reel.
Therefore, no sound is lost and the projectionist has a small margin of error to work with.


TOO MUCH INFORMATION ????

OK, yeah, well maybe.

Hopefully, this explains what "cigarette burns" are and that they represent a very real link to the organic and physical nature of film that is often forgotten about in discussions about film presented on video.

Greg Hoey

[HDTV Forum]

Interesting. I'm a bit confused though. About 10 years ago I had a friend that worked at one of the local movie houses in a small town (50,000) and she gave me a tour of the projection room one time. They received all the reels for a film in a mother of a reinforced steel/wood box for protection. The removed the numbered reels and spliced them together on one very large reel to feed into the projector. When their time to have the movie was done, the removed the splices, put the film back on their original reels, and then returned them to the distribution company for delivery to the next theater or 99 cent type movie house, depending on what stage the film was in it's run life. I assumed that if a small town did it like this, everyone did.

BiggerDee

[HDTV Forum]

You are correct.

Virtually every theatre in America uses the single projector platter system that you saw in that small town.

Sorry I wasn't more clear about that.

My point was that CIGARETTE BURNS / CHANGEOVER CUES are a holdover from the days when platters were NOT the prevelent system.

Now, the only theatres that regularily use two projectors -- and good projectionists -- are
professional screening rooms used by film industry people and film critics. The main reason they do it is that they don't have time to put fims on a platter as they are often showing a different film each time.

Film festivals and preview screenings also use the two projector system when needed.

Greg Hoey